Eurostat says Germany’s unemployed are the poorest in Europe

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and the fourth largest in the world, has a tremendously ineffective welfare state, to the extent that the country’s unemployed are more likely to suffer from extreme poverty than any other country in Europe, according to Eurostat.

A staggering 71% of Germany’s unemployed risk extreme poverty compared to 60% in Lithuania, 56% in Latvia, and approximately 40% in France, Cyprus, and Finland.

Since 2013, the CDU-led government has advocated a constitutionalised budget surplus across each German federal state – irrespective of the socioeconomic context – and Chancellor Angela Merkel began arguing in favour of austerity politics, saying, “If Europe today accounts for just over 7% of the world’s population and produces around 25% of global GDP, {it cannot} finance 50% of global social spending.”